


so when you met the new you

by mageofmind (renegadeartist)



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Character Study, Introspection, POV Second Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-06
Updated: 2018-01-06
Packaged: 2019-03-01 02:17:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,469
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13284828
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/renegadeartist/pseuds/mageofmind
Summary: Like you expected, you find yourself face to face with one of your oldest enemies. The one who finds the concept of universal genocide fascinating. The one who whittles away your mercy little by little. The one who has tried to kill your companions countless times and brought on countless deaths and countless wars.And you find that kindness comes easily to you.





	so when you met the new you

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from upside down & inside out by ok go. The contents of this is basically points I missed in my other character study.
> 
> Also: sort-of spoilers for Twice Upon a Time

You are born out of the dust and ashes of a millennium of stagnation and loss. Your mind is full of blurred memories, years bleeding together and faces living, growing, and dying. You lost your sense of self long ago, some time between when you realized that you were going to die, as you were, in a place awash with war and battle, and when your life stopped mattering more than protecting those around you.

But now you are different, your emotions run rampant, tearing away at you and making things too  _ much _ . So you kick them away, you try to don a mask, like the others before you had. But you find that you have no natural mask, no bubbly or charming personality to hide behind. Stuffing the things you feel deep inside yourself does nothing but make you distant and uncaring. 

(You are not sure if this is different, or if this is how you have always been, because everything from Before is a blur and hard to hold on to. It feels like something you have read rather than something you lived through. You think you must be different, though, in some fundamental way, because your companion does not smile like she used to.) 

For so long you are a bundle of sticks and kindling that refuses to ignite. You are a hollow mask. You are a cruel tactician. You may rage against it, but you are an officer. You wonder if this means that you are not good anymore (if you ever truly were). You can no longer gauge yourself from the humans around you, because what you are can’t fit behind the mask that you are convinced is a necessity. Everything you do seems to cause distress, and you are not sure why.

For so long, you exist in a void, unable to settle. You have no idea who you are or who you want to be, because  the bowtie chokes, the pinstripes are too tight, the leather is cracked and everyone else is a distant memory of Before. 

You drift through the Before, until Clara slaps you, drags you down to reality, and makes you listen. Until Missy provides a spark. Until the people around you treat you like the Doctor and not some sort of replacement. 

You think, now, that you might know who you are. You let yourself start running, to smile and hug and be more tactile. You loosen up your wardrobe and you are less scared to do the things use used to. You lower the mask and you let yourself exist as you are. 

Then there is a boy in a battlefield, and you make a choice you shouldn’t have. It tears at you, at everything you’ve built up, and you feel the all too familiar self hatred well up again. It is so much more, this time, because this life magnifies and intensifies emotion, makes it almost too much to handle. But you have tried shoving it away and it didn’t help anyone, much less yourself. So you let it be. And you strip down your walls and you let yourself live as you are, in this life, for as long as this life will last.

Because you will be summoned to face the consequences of your actions, and you can’t think of a scenario where you escape. You can’t think of one where you want to. 

(You wonder what would happen if you just laid down and slept. You don’t think the Universe will let you.) 

Like you expected, you find yourself face to face with one of your oldest enemies. The one who finds the concept of universal genocide fascinating. The one who whittles away your mercy little by little. The one who has tried to kill your companions countless times and brought on countless deaths and countless wars. 

And you find that kindness comes easily to you.

You find it easy to look at the scheming, aged face and see the boy you left behind. You look at the face of an old man, in the middle of a city of a terrible race, on a planet that had been destroyed time and time again, and you are not angry. You don’t want to yell or mock or rage. You want to help. You are what is behind the mask, and what is behind the mask can’t be so bad, not when it is laughter that fills the room.

But you know that, while you have changed, Davros has not. You wish it was different, but for a race so stagnated and rooted in their beliefs, change does not come easily or, you’ve found, at all. 

Things are good, for a while. You have learned how to be yourself first and the Doctor second, though you seem to be the only person to consider them different. But summer can’t last forever. 

A call. A death sentence. A mistake. 

You’ve found yourself at the edge of a steep cliff. You teeter and almost fall, but you know who you are, now. You know that you would rather fight against these people than give them answers. You know that a second of eternity is worth it to fulfill your duty of care. You know that you’ve lost so much and so many and you can’t lose again. 

But, in the end, it is not your decision to make. 

There’s darkness, for a while. There’s a hole in your memories. There’s an empty place by your side that you know should be filled but isn’t. You feel off balance, confused and lost. What is someone but the sum of their memories? What is a Time Lord without their past? 

But there is no time to stumble, to fall into the void in your head. You can’t fall to the Veil, because you’ve found someone else you need and who needs you. You have failed so many times before, danced around River, distrusted and riposted and kept away. You know that it is long past time to be a little less scared, and a little more trusting. You find happiness in a little gap of forever, a blip in millennia, but it is enough to start to patch up the holes and bridge the void. You are ready for more. For whatever the universe will throw at you. 

The universe throws loneliness, your friend’s execution, and a vow at you. You catch each and rebel against the constraints imposed on you. You settle in a university and teach. You have so much to share and so much to talk about. You can give so much to the youth, to some of the best and the worst of humanity. You find the prospect of leaving a bright young woman out of it because she doesn’t have enough worthless bits of paper to make the university accept her as a student ludicrous. You take her instead. 

She deserves better, to grow and learn and live. She deserves so much, so you give her all that you can. You find the prospect of her hurting, of being damaged or scarred in any way, unacceptable. It is an opening for more, for more fear and hurt, to sneak in. She is strong, but she deserves only the best of the universe. 

You fear the day that she will become another loss, another memory that you will live up to and mourn for the rest of your lives. 

You have found who you are, through hardship and friendship. You have found kindness in your hearts, shoved away by fear and grief, locked away because war is no place for it. You have found something to be proud of, an identity beyond a mask that you can truly call your own. 

You face that identity crumbling. You face it, you look it in the eyes, and you find only fear. You have won this, this self, this identity, with blood, sweat, and tears. Through forgiveness and loss and sheer force of will. You have earned this and you don’t want it taken away. 

You can’t face another diamond mountain. 

You can’t survive that again. 

But there is a younger-older-different face, and you recognize it as much as you don’t. They have the same feelings, the same desire to die as they are, but they know that they can’t. They know doing so would cheat their successors out of life, out of their chances, out of their identities. You know that you are doing the same. You know the Doctor can’t end here, even if you do. 

You know that you’ve had a good run, and you can only hope the next one finds that kindness comes as easily. 

In the end, you know the importance of growth and change.

So you let yourself go. 


End file.
